


Dispute Between Sisters

by Beatrice_Sank



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Angst, Dysfunctional Family, Family Reunion, Gen, like buckets and buckets of it you have no idea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 18:15:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17872307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beatrice_Sank/pseuds/Beatrice_Sank
Summary: Someone's been knocking on Janey-E Jones's door all morning. She's not exactly sure who.





	Dispute Between Sisters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laughingpineapple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/gifts).



> A late treat!

There are very few real doors in Vegas. It’s not a thing one often considers, but she has: double-wing doors in casinos that open almost magically so that you barely feel you’re entering a different world; automatic doors in hospitals and shops; revolving doors to save the air conditioning in courthouses, sliding doors on the flank of luxurious villas and barred doors mostly everywhere else, full of holes and letting air in. There are so many prisons in Vegas.

So yes, a solid door is hard to find. She’s not so sure about her house, but no matter the trouble – and there has been trouble, of various nature, since she’s moved here – the one they have here has always done the job of containing whatever needed to be contained.

There’s been knocking on the front door all morning, but she’ll be damned before she ever considers opening. Who knows what it could be ; in times like these, her best guess was unwanted solicitors, and given her last experience, better let them think there was no one at home. So what, there’s knocking on the front door. Sometimes it stops for a while, as if they were running out of patience. But then, after thirty minutes or so, it starts again.  
Still.

She has the distant impression it’s getting louder.

 

It’s the main drawback in having a good door to oneself: occasionally, it got knocked on.

She’s sought refuge in the living room, which makes a good neutral space, in beiges and browns, homely and anchoring like a piece of ambient jazz.

It doesn’t really matter that she fucking hates jazz. The sun pours through the large window doors, and it feels like it’s slowly filling the room with liquid warmth – hot like a teapot. Here with a 4,99 dollars novel from the supermarket stand an a bottle of pills, she can withstand a siege – not that it will come to this, but apparently a “No adds” sign under the bell won’t shield you from everything life wants to sell.

She’s reached the point in her novel, the classic 3rd quarter, where drama is at its top and it’s becoming virtually impossible to put it down, when the knocking suddenly resumes. Maybe she jumps a bit, because this is out of pattern, and then she notices: it also sounds different.

 

Knock knock.

 

And closer. Much closer. A small, irritated shock on thick glass.

 

Knock knock. Look up. Look up, it says like a whisper. She focuses on the badly printed line.

“ _...danger, and how much love. I know you’ve always thought of her as a sister, I should have told you before, but you have to understand, it would have destroyed...”_

“Oh for fuck sake, Ground Control to Major Tom!”

The novel ends up on the beige carpet. There is someone at the French door that leads to the backyard. Well, it’s not someone. It’s Diane. Separated from her by maybe three meters plus an inch of double glazing, and looking royally pissed. Diane, whose hair is dyed half-white, half-red like a crazy queen from some strange card game, but whom she recognizes instantly, even after all this time. Colors may vary, the pissed expression remains a given. It’s sort of reassuring really. There at least they’re on common ground, always have been – she still thinks her anger to be warmer, more humane, shoving people in the right direction despite themselves, what she calls a good roasting and then she got what she wanted and people yielded, admitted she was right. Because she was angry at people. Diane was angry at the sky.

“Well don’t stare like a dead fish, it’s just me.”

Nothing could be less clear. No phone call, no mail, no indirect news, nothing in… How many pills? The doctor said…

“It’s a shitty lawn you have here. All those flowers look like they have been painted by a psychotic kindergartner,” Diane says lightly, before squinting at her, eyeing her jumper critically. “One does wonder. It’s a hole in the desert after all.”

It’s settled then. Apparently she’s not going to be given the opportunity to be shocked. Typical. It’s unfair but it might also be one of her greatest strengths: Diane is one to ignore context.

“What the hell happened to your hair,” she asks in what is, under those circumstances, a useless fit of politeness.

“What seems to always happen to my hair. Now what the hell happened to your life? Saw your name on some plaque out there and...”

“This better be about the twenty dollars you still owe me,” she cuts in sharply, the niceties out of the way. She’s good with numbers, although she would be incapable of saying how many years it’s been, but money is different, tangible. More tangible than her ransacked room, clothes scattered on the floor, drawers left open, bills and letters everywhere, her piggy bank smashed (what a ridiculous picture, she thinks now, this memory looks like a naive drawing), the family house empty.

Diane smirks, stepping on known territory.

“Still mad about that? It’s been, what, how long? You always wanted to leave too, you were just too timid. Hitting the road’s never really been your thing, has it? And you don’t get anything for twenty dollars these days.”

Diane’s outfit is one of the most sober she’s ever seen her in, she reflects: red top, black skirt. There must be a trap somewhere. There always is.

“I don’t want you in my house,” she says, mouthing the words at the glass deliberately.

Behind the door, Diane sighs exasperatedly before disappearing for a second. She doesn’t dare blinking, in case it’s really it and she’s succeeded in making her go just like that, by the sheer force of her rebuttal. But Diane is not one of those delicate vampires from the novels she read last month, who would never try to enter a house uninvited; a second later she’s back with a garden chair, and sits down abruptly in front of her, nails tapping on the white iron arm.

“This is ridiculous. But at your ease. God, you always were so overstrung, it’s unbelievable. I’ll wait. Doesn’t look like you’re too busy either.”

It suddenly occurs to her that Sonny Jim is playing outside, has been for quite some time now. He must be out there, somewhere, and might come back any minute. She feels herself pale at the thought.

 

“Now, where were we? Ah, yes, the nickname. I mean fuck, Jane, even you must realize how terrible that sounds. On your fucking mailbox! And what’s the E for? Are you so proud of your old one you felt the need to get branded on the ear like a pitiful sentimental dog?”

In a stride she’s standing against the door, and slaps the glass with her hand in anger.

“Shut up,” she spits. “You of all people don’t get to call me anything.”

All she gets in an unfazed raised eyebrow. If only there was less reflection...

“It’s fascinating, frankly, watching you getting agitated in there, turning in your little aquarium. It’s a miracle I can ever hear you, come to think of it. Thank my spectacular hearing.”

She pauses to consider something that seems to amuse her greatly.

“Say what you will about me but I would burst into flames before I let anyone call me something other than the name Mom gave me after a night of fun at _Ricco’s_ , eight margaritas and a lousy salsa number.”

Jane stares straight into her eyes, mouth tight in a hard line.

“Liar.”

Diane seems genuinely impressed this time, as her second eyebrow joins the first.

“Ooh, alright Nancy, you caught me, fine. Gee, for a near-suicidal, abandoned housewife, you still have some bite. Do you think she was sober when I was born though? I’ve always wondered.”

 

This skirt is probably too tight for a hip flask, she thinks, which is rather surprising. No coat in sight, but that doesn’t mean anything. She knows this voice, raspy, filled with interesting asperities, has been sculpted by cigarettes and alcohol, and is beginning to sound a lot like the voice that named them originally. That’s what she should tell her, in retaliation, oh yes that would make her mad, she could, she really could. But Diane is looking at her from her chair, legs crossed, chin up, ready for battle, and she’s paralyzed. It’s entirely laughable: she never loses a fight, to anyone, always has the upper hand on whoever dares look at her the wrong way, a well-known fact in the neighborhood. But this is a fight she can never win, though she tried and tried. After a moment, she sees her lower her head and hear a gentle, sad whisper:

“Come on, talk to me.”

Her sister’s right, though. This glass is too thick. She isn’t strong enough for this.

“And say what? You know, _you know_ you’re incapable of answering a question straight. It was always your forte, wasn’t it? This whole family, each talking only to themselves, and you… all ears, yeah? Never let anything slip. Could always be useful. You could have left a note, when you disappeared, you could have explained. Is there a point in asking now? How long have you been standing there?”

Diane has the good grace of looking vaguely embarrassed.

“Time is relative,” she points out, as if it was a worn-out punchline.

“God I hate you.”

 

For a second she thinks she’s going to laugh at her, but in that instant, the knocking on the front door resumes, and she sees her reflected eyes fill with fear. She’s pretty certain Diane’s widen too, even if she quickly covers it with an acid smile, leaning forward in her chair to press both palms against the door.

“Now that’s interesting. It’s really your social calls day, then? I wonder…”

Her silhouette shivers, a bit blurred now or maybe it’s just her eyes, and how many pills again?

“You’re not going to take that, are you?” she asks, her definite bitterness back into place as the hard knocking continues. “I mean, you’d better open this and join me. Trust me, I offer far better prospects.”

The lines on her palms are so numerous and winding, like small rivers tortuously converging toward a waterfall. She’s aged, she guesses, although that face could be from any timeline or pantheon. Such a clear profile and such remarkable hands seem displaced in the purposefully vague setting of her living room. In the frame of the French doors, she looks like an expressionist figure trapped into a still-life. Out of time.

“Come on,” Diane says like she’s being the only responsible adult here. “Let me in.”

“I’ve already made that mistake once. Never again.”

Face between her hands, Diane gives her a Cheshire grin:

“Now who’s lying.”

After a moment of reflection, she adds, uncrossing her legs:

“Suit yourself. It’s sunnier on my side. In fact it would be far better, such a progress as I said, if you could, for once… Join me. It’s been so long.”

Those last words come out more as a wistful whisper than a barb, and she thinks she feels the glass tremble fleetingly. Shitty isolation. Shitty work, she will make sure to tell the contractor, ask for a refund – should be worth more than twenty dollars this one, although there’s a lot she would trade to get her twenty back. They would have grown. Together.

Diane’s forehead comes to rest on the door.

“Jane,” she says, in that impossible soft voice she sometimes borrows to God knows who, the one that always breaks all her resolve because it sounds so fragile.

“Jane, please. How hard can it be?”

Against her will, her body slowly glides down against the glass, until she’s just a shrinking little ball of herself, hugging her knees and crouching on the carpet. Gently, she touches her forehead against her sister’s, closing her eyes at the cold contact.

“You know it’s really fucking unfair,” she tries, voice quivering. “All I want is to put my head on your knees, like we used to do, and you would stroke my hair and say...”

“My my, we’re getting gray.”

She can’t help but smile a bit tearfully, as Diane’s hand passes over her head carefully, imitating a caress.

It’s like having this bad, perfectly vicious but well-meaning cat that keeps bringing you what he thinks to be offerings in the form of dead mice and the occasional bleeding rabbit on the mat. The sort of animal that watches you with a mix of devotion and cruelty. Sometimes, the memory of a kinder, more forgiving Diane comes to her, but it’s so distant she might as well be a different person.

“I wish we were better at being sisters.”

“Half-sisters.”

“Why do you always have to insist on that,” she says flatly, since after all this time no one expects her to show it still hurts, and feeling someone is cutting her in half has become rather ridiculous. Diane sighs a long sigh. Apparently, she doesn’t have the will the commit herself to the required level of anger either.

“Because,” she points out. “You don’t stand out on your own. I only have to blow and this whole house will collapse like a pile of straw. The walls are tired.”

They are both tired.

“I get it, you know. The dollhouse, the nicknames, the godawful marriage. Mom never gave us a good time, did she? And you were always more optimistic than I can bear to be. Clung to your fairy-tale, believing life owed you, that you’ll be rewarded... But you know it’s not for us. It’s never been.”

 

Slowly, Jane gets to her feet, supporting herself on the door – those prints will never go away now, no matter how much Clorox she applies, no matter how many hours she spends, skin reddened from the scrubbing, trying to clean her house off the traces of the encounter.

“My son is coming home soon. He’s been playing outside,” she declares blankly, as if she has been the one scrubbed of all emotions.

Diane shakes her head skeptically.

“So I’ve heard. What’s his name again?”

She tries to answer defiantly, though unexpected tenderness half-ruins the original intention, leaving her more vulnerable than she would have wanted.

Diane snorts.

“Well, too late to do anything about that, I suppose. I must say I’m surprised you’ve chosen to reproduce after all. Considering how Mom hated you.”

There’s a buzzing in her ears, she, she probably took too many pills, it’s getting stronger by the minute and she can’t even get hold of her own anger, pressing her hands to her ears as if it could help or protect her from sounds plexiglass cannot block.

“Don’t you dare talking to him! He cannot see you!”

But Diane’s voice insists like a knife poking at a bleeding wound.

“No, let’s talk about it, actually. How was the pregnancy, Jane? The delivery? You never called to give gross details, drown me with moving anecdotes. What about,” she smirks, her face like a broken mirror, “what about the father?”

Jane turns her back to the window.

 

If she keeps her eyes shut, her ears covered, this will all disappear. It’s easy, really easy: she counts backward in her head, thinking of the bills, of her car that needs to go for safety inspection again, of the density of her front door.

“Anyway,” the voice continues, unflappable, “I’ve got a feeling that kid and I would go on like a house on fire.”

The thought is too terrifying to consider, yet she feels compelled to ask to the empty room:

“Why?”

It’s almost like a riddle, with an obvious solution nobody ever guesses. Diane’s tone, however, stays as casual as can be.

“Seems obvious to me. We’re both outside. Means we must somehow agree on some basic facts of life. And like I said, I’ve got a feeling. Given the circumstances.”

Sonny Jim. He’s… He’s hers. He’s Sonny Jim, _he’s just a kid_ , she often tells herself without any particular reason. He doesn’t talk that much and has trouble going to sleep at night, but he likes cars and bright lights and watching sad television movies all day long. Sometimes he comes to her and takes her in his arms, encircling her legs and he doesn’t let go. Her little boy.

 

She slowly turns around. It’s silly, but she can’t remember when exactly he went out in the garden and it… She needs reassurance. Needs to have a big sister, just for a moment. Behind the glass, Diane extends her hand in her direction.

“Come on, Alice. You can do it. Cross it, come to my side.”

In her back, the grass is glowing neon green under the desert’s sun, a coherent background to the white metal chair that is now empty. Diane is standing up, her long body pressed against the glass.

Jane gives the smallest nod. Stopping millimeters from the door, she raises her forehead to catch a ray of sun, and sighs longingly. Suppose she gets out. It’s not so ludicrous an idea after all. It’s a nice day. It’s always a nice day.

She’s not completely sure she can manage, though. It seems so far out of her usual territory. She was never one to explore the wilderness, not her. But she has figured out some secret passages, dug some holes into her everyday life, like anybody else. Diane’s not the only one who’s gone places.

 

“Sometimes I imagine… You will find it weird.”

“Well you know me, as long as everything’s consensual I’m very open minded.”

Gluing herself to the panel, she whispers like someone who’s about to tell a bedtime story, in that breathy voice every parent uses and every adult remembers, the voice of darkness and blurred consciousness, the voice of dreams.

“Sometimes I imagine I’m in a supermarket, walking the aisles, and it’s a giant thing you see, one of those hellish places, corridors and corridors of huge shelves and bright, high ceilings – it’s so bright, so blindingly white everywhere it’s giving me a headache. I’m pushing a big clinking cart and I’m looking for… I don’t know, stuff to buy I guess, you know how this goes. Or maybe you don’t, because honestly, seeing you now and even then given what you looked like, and you didn’t change much, I just can’t picture you in a supermarket at all. Nonetheless, you’re here, walking by my side, dawdling. Making disparaging comments about everything. And yet I don’t tell you to shut up, I don’t get mad as I should. You’re like a halo, red and white and black in the corner of my eyes as I look straight ahead not to bump into other carts. You say “Why are we meeting here? Is that your idea of a middle ground?” And then “How did we get here again? It’s a blur.”

Behind the glass, she thinks she sees Diane frowns.

“You’re insulting the people we cross path with, but it’s as if you’re transparent, and no one reacts, no one tries to punch you. Then you lean toward me, to pick up lint on my jumper, saying “Oh look you’re fraying”, saying “If it’s not the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen”. At some point, don’t ask why, you go and snatch something, a trinket, nothing much, and hide it under you clothes, but so badly that it’s obviously sticking out under your top. It makes a rectangular bump on your stomach and then you turn to me, so proud of yourself, and explain: “Look, it’s a baby. Or a tumor. Same difference really, but who knew I could buy myself an extension.”

And I want to point out you haven’t bought anything, but then it comes to me the times are so hard on everyone already, and that must include even you, even if you always seemed to skim the surface of things as if you were made of teflon and polish… And I think, you deserve something. I should let you have it, I shouldn’t tell. And the lines at the cashier are so fucking, unbearably long, and I just can’t, I can’t wait…”

 

**/**

 

How did they get here again? It’s a blur. The aisles are endless, colored squares and colored squares of manufactured, overly-transformed goods piling up, blocking the horizon. She probably can’t afford a thing on her ridiculous payroll: Gordon said, she thinks, that he wouldn’t be able to explain a raise to HQ, and Albert said she only lived on booze and dresses anyway like every other agent, and she raised an eyebrow and prepared to say something scathing and then…

Jane is holding a shopping list that looks boring even from a distance, and she doesn’t even give her missions. She likes being given missions, like “go and fetch me some sugar”, “stone black olives, Greek brand, yellow jar” (she also likes precision), “choose me some wine, will you”, “we’re out of coffee”, “I forgot, could you get me some nightwear? I left too soon, once again, you were right. I trust your choice. And maybe a toothbrush? Thank you Diane.”

 

“Give me your list,” she suddenly says to her sister, extending a commanding hand.

“What? Absolutely not.”

“Give me your list, don’t be daft. I get things done.”

If she waits for Jane to be satisfied with the content of her shopping cart, they will be roaming this place forever.

“Well I do too.”

She snorts in disbelief, which evidently aggravates Jane and prompts her to engage in a ridiculous rant in the middle of the dairy department.

“You see, that’s the thing, that’s exactly it! You never acknowledged it because it was impossible to keep you indoors, but there’s a reason there was food on your plate whenever you decided to come home from wherever, and not much junk around the house. You think Mom managed it? You wanted to be on your own, you wanted to shine – I stayed. It’s crazy you still believe yourself to be the bravest one. Review your memories, if you still have some. They’re all because of me, because of what I did all day. Nobody noticed, but if you think about it now, it was all my work, I shaped this place and what if felt like for you. The specific smell of the house, the little traditions like Sunday’s pie, the texture of your clean clothes, the photographs, the flowers in the front yard...”

“No. The flowers were mine.”

“Fine, have it your way. My name is written in diagonal over it all and there’s nothing you can do to change that. I’m sure you wish you could.”

“That’s a fucking awful thing to say.”

Silence falls again, except for the squeaking of the cart as they resume their shopping. After a while, Diane asks:

“Is that your way of giving me the business?”

“Oh no, no, I would never, obviously you’re way past that, a real dream!”

She’s been into fights more often than she cares to count, but it’s not everyday that someone manages to make her feel like a moody teenager.

“I’ll go and get some vodka. It says here...”

Quick as a flash, Jane smacks her hand away from the piece of paper.

“Shoo. Get your own list. It’s high time you find yourself a sense of purpose anyway. I mean something other than making my life a living hell.”

“Oh I think you’re doing fine on your own, for once,” she hears herself mumble as she retreats into her lanky frame

 

After that, their trip seems to undergo a mysterious acceleration. Before she has time to collect her wits, maybe find a better comeback, forget what she was told, they’re at the checkout, and Jane is looking at her expectantly.

“So? Not so chatty now, are you? And how do you propose to pay?”

This was never on the program. Why should she pay for something Jane needs anyway? And why is there nobody else trying to buy their way out of this heap of shit? The supermarket looks all but abandoned now. There’s no cashier either, it seems. Fucking convenient. Always lovely to get all the anguish and no answers. But all their items have been scanned somehow, the machine says so. She tries to look at the amount but the red numbers are trembling, unclear, and it’s impossible for her to say how much she owes this place, no matter how hard she concentrates.

“I’m not paying for this.”

Her heartbeat is in her ears, and there’s a red line printed on her retina when she tries to close her eyes.

“Someone has to, and you know it.”

No. No no no, she won’t do that, she refuses. This is another of Jane’s stupid rules, but she won’t let it get at her, she’s got no reason to be here, nothing to respond for, and nothing happened to her that would justify this. She’s fine. She’s the one who’s fine.

“Come on,” she hears. “How hard can it be?”

 

/

 

Too much sun in her face, her eyes are wetting and she cannot see a thing, or is it because her living room is so beige? She blinks and blinks and blinks at the French doors, standing still, until she can recognize her sister once again on the other side. She’s breathing hard, swallowing the bright images and the anxiety of numbers being pressed to her skull like a red iron bar.

“I remember,” she tells her. “Will you open now?”

“I can’t.”

“I won’t hurt you.”

And Jane, small, dependable Jane, glares at her from behind the panel and laughs. Oh they’ve never strangled themselves with their own joy, this family.

Before she can stop herself, she’s hitting the glass with a desperate fist, not minding her strength. It splits in a white little net that soon gets covered in red as she cries:

“Stop looking at me with your anonymous face!”

And just as she does, a loud bang is heard from the other side of the house. It’s the front door, sounding like it’s about to be blown off if someone doesn’t answer right away. Jane yelps, and Diane swallows her tears to say:

“There! You can’t really escape it, it’s either me or the door now. Do you want to open it? Because it sounds angry.”

She really wishes there was a hammer hidden behind a round bush in that nightmarish garden. They’re running out of time, her sister’s panicking and the noise is getting unbearable. She’s scared too, she is, but she also had all this time to let her anger build so here she stands, fired up and terrified, mad at the world in general and at security doors in particular.

“Tell you what,” she nods at the entrance with fake bravery, trying to ignore her bleeding hand and the red spots left on the white chair. “I wish we could join force to give hell to whoever this is, like we used to. Remember Tim Berth? That kid wet himself. What a team.”

Jane manages a trembling smile and she sniffs, hugging her sides as the banging on the door continues.

“Well that little shit got what he deserved for pissing on our roses, didn’t he?” she croaks.

“Yeah… Never mess with the Evans sisters.”

As Jane begins to sob, she becomes aware of something pressing against her stomach. Not taking her eyes from her sister and the lines of the front door she can vaguely makes out in the background, she carefully feels her abdomen with her good hand. There’s a small, hard rectangle under her shirt. With two fingers she fishes it out. It’s only when Jane spots it, eyes widening, that she allows herself to have a look too.

It’s a tape case, a transparent one so she doesn’t have to open it to see what’s folded inside, two neat nested cylinders made of ten-dollars bills. They’re so cramped in there she can’t even properly see the President’s face. Oh well.

She looks up at Jane, broken and normal, trapped in her beige aquarium with so much trouble knocking at her door. She takes a deep breath.

“Alright then, let’s do this. Let’s rock.”

And with that, she grabs the heavy garden chair in one swift motion, and throws it at the glass door.


End file.
